Cinema: Newsreel, Sep. 20, 1954

¶ In Venice, judges at the isth International Film Festival announced the win ners of this year’s competition. Grand prize winner: an Italian-British production (in English) of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Four second prize winners: On the Waterfront (U.S.), The Street (Italy), The Seven Samurai and Functionary Sun-sho (both Japan). Best actor: France’s Jean Gabin (for his work in L’Air de Paris and Touchez Pas au Grisbi). “Special” prize: MGM’s Executive Suite. On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, walked off with two additional prizes: one from the Italian Motion Picture Journalists Association, the other from the International Catholic Film Office.

¶ From Ben Hecht ex-newsman, author and sometime movie scenarist, came another slashing denunciation of Hollywood (his last: in a chapter of his biography A Child of the Century—TIME, June 21). This time Hecht replied to critics who say that he is biting the hands that fed him. Said he: “I got $12,000 from M-G-M for writing Viva Villa, and all the studio made on the picture was $2,000,000 net. I was paid $19,000 by RKO for writing Scarf ace, which made between $2,000,000 and $4,000,000 net for the studio. Sam Goldwyn paid me $50,000 for Wuthering Heights, and all Sam made was a million. David Selznick, the finest boss I had in Hollywood, paid me $75,000for Spellbound, and his net profit was about $3,000,000. I wrote Notorious for RKO and the studio paid me $75,000, which was peanuts compared with the $4,000,000 profit on the film.”

¶ In Harper Woods, near Detroit, parents demanded an ordinance to prohibit a local drive-in from showing “objectionable” pictures. Reason: neighborhood children were watching the drive-in screen at night from their bedrooms—especially Jane Russell’s often-banned French Line. The youngsters, claimed their fathers, were happy to scoot up to bed; moreover, they did not mind lack of sound from the film.

As one boy explained: “It’s like having a 100-ft. TV that you can’t turn off.”